YOUTH, IDENTITY AND SECURITY CLUSTER

The Youth, Identity and Security cluster brings together activities by FRIDE, Interpeace, NEP and SFCG.

Research, including within the Initiative for Peacebuilding, shows that gender, age, ethnic and religious and identity groups have different experiences of and responses to the (non)-provision of security by the state. This is a warning sign of and/or testament to the fact that the state is losing, or has lost, its ability to assure the exercise of legitimate violence in support of the rule of law. The threat to peace and stability in such situations is not limited to countries labeled as being ‘fragile’. There is much to be learnt in explicitly ‘conflict-affected’ situations from the dynamics of, and responses to, gang crime and the interrelationships between organized crime and ‘structural’ violence in other contexts.

This cluster will examine how communities respond to the (non-) provision of security and justice as well as how government and donor policies impact on those dynamics, perhaps themselves catalyzing or reducing violence.

The cluster will include research and policy dialogue, to present and share experiences and analyses among practitioners and policy makers. Research and workshops will include analysis of the role of youth in violence ‘dissemination’ and ‘containment’ in urban territories of Bissau in Guinea-Bissau and Praia in Cape Verde (NEP), and in the unstable contexts of Nepal and Sierra Leone (SFCG), and Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador (Interpeace). In addition, this cluster will include research in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), San Salvador (El Salvador) and Maputo (Mozambique) on the role of women and girls in armed violence as well as the differentiated impacts of armed violence in women’s lives (NEP).

Cluster coordinator :Philippe Bartholme